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Neighbourhood Welcome
The morning meal was a combination of the dodgy goat meat and grilled mushrooms. Not a repast of kings, but still enough to make sure everyone started the day with plenty of energy.
With the meal done, Procene immediately went to continue her research, Odile and Larisa tended the fields like they always did, and Squires set to constructing a new building, leaving his plans of putting a separate bedroom together until the evening. Chef figured it was only natural. Lovers wanted to be together, after all, away from, well, prying eyes. It was fine by him, he preferred not to have to hear noises he wasn't supposed to.
Cass lingered by the fire for a little longer, then went on her way to find more meat. Their work was never done, it seemed. With nothing better to do, Chef helped Squires out a bit. He'd apparently decided to build in stone this time, and was hauling chunks of them towards a worktable, where he used the welder-cutter to slice them into blocks the size of a shoebox.
"I'll take care of that," Chef said, taking his place at the worktable and slicing the stones, returning for the occasional new chunk. It was a cold, black type of stone that chipped easily, but was still very workable. Slate, probably, or something like it.
Squires had found some way to make mortar, it seemed, by mixing ash with wet lime. As he came by to collect more blocks, he told Chef that I wasn't proper cement, but it would hold for a generation of two if they were lucky. Sweat stood on his brow, but he uttered nary a complaint. Chef, too, was fighting the heat as he hauled chunks and cut blocks, but seeing the building slowly take form gave him the energy he needed to keep going. Stone was much more durable than wood, after all, and the first stone building would be a turning point. No more sleeping in wooden barracks. As Squires came to collect more blocks with a wheelbarrow he'd cobbled together for the occasion, Chef asked him what he was building.
Squires took a second to catch his breath and stretch his back and said, "Provision warehouse. Place to store our food and perishables. Once the harvests start coming in," he nudged his chin at the fields, "we'll need a place to keep out stuff out of the light and the heat. The shack we're using now is badly insulated and rickety. This'll be much better. Eventually", his fingers danced at the area around the in-progress building, "I hope to replace the kitchen walls with stone and attach them to the storehouse. That way you can cook more efficiently and it's not such a fire hazard."
Chef had to admit that right now, the wooden shack for cooking was an inferno waiting to happen.
"We can then use the old kitchen for something else, or tear it down, use the boards as fuel." He shrugged. "I think there's enough stone and binding material to last us a good long time. As long as someone keeps cutting stone, we can keep building." He chuckled. "If neither of our backs give out."
It was around noon when Cassie and Noah returned with a carcass of another goat, much like the mad one Procene had shot the night before. This one, thankfully, had been docile. It meant a welcome break for Chef to stop cutting stone (he'd put together a nice reserve for Squires anyway) and cook up lunch. He deftly gutted, skinned and cleaned the ibex, whipped up some berry sauce and threw in the mushrooms they had left as a side dish. It was too much for one sitting, but meat kept longer when it was cooked, and as long as the provision warehouse wasn't finished, they'd need to do their best to make supplies last as long as possible.
As if through magic, Procene (again Procene!) came sailing in on a post-apocalyptic wind with the announcement that she'd probably found a way to create air coolers that could keep a room cold, even freezing, if enough of them were enabled. That, along with some way to generate power by burning wood.
Everyone's interest was immediately peaked, even Chef's and even Larisa's, as Procene explained the process of building a generator and hooking it up to the cooling machines. All they needed were the right components and a metal housing. They wouldn't need to program components, since both functions already had components set to perform the relevant tasks, after all, the longsleepers needed to both generate their own power, and be cooled and heated. It was just a matter of hooking the right component up to the right machine.
After the meal, Squires followed Procene to her research table where she explained what needed to be done, and it wasn't before long that he and Chef put together a big metal crate with an exhaust and a component embedded in the top. Procene gave directions, explaining that the big crate would be used to burn wood, the heat from which would be converted into electrical power by the component set in the top. She'd cannibalised some wiring from the longsleepers and attacked that to the stone walls, leading back to the generator. When the generator was successfully welded together – it was more complex than just a steel crate, but they'd still been able to put it together rather easily – she hooked the wire to the component and then had them build small steel housings, not more than big vents, essentially, and set a component in those as well.
"Alright," she announced with an anticipating sigh. "Let's… see if this works."
They chucked some firewood into the generator, set it alight and saw the light on the component blink on. A second or two later after they'd closed the hatch, the improvised coolers began emitting a low buzz.
Tiptoeing towards them, as if afraid to scare them into malfunctioning, Procene held up her remaining hand and felt the stream of air.
Her face was expressionless for a short moment before her eyes lit up and she said, "Feel, feel!"
Squires' eyes told Chef the same thing he felt himself, a feeling of a hope they finally dared to have. They both ran towards Procene and felt the air. It was cold.
"Ha-haaaa!" Squires exclaimed, jumping in the air, up and down, pumping his fist like an idiot. "It's working! It's workiiiiing!"
Feeling all inhibitions fall off him, Chef permitted himself to break into song, strutting around with his elbows out, his thumbs hooked in imaginary suspenders. "I am the monarch of the sea! I am the ruler of the Queen's na-vee!", he sang, uncaring who was watching him. Larisa could say whatever she wanted, this girl had brought them incredible knowledge and if that wasn't showing she was worthy of trust, then nothing was.
Squires held his fists up in the air and Chef vigorously bumped his into them. "Pow-waaaa!"
Procene, meanwhile, stood smiling her usual gentle smile, her lovely eyes narrowed by her smiling cheeks, watching the two give expression to their elation.
"Procene," Squires shouted, "I would carve you an honest-to-God statue if we had the time and I had the skill!"
She chuckled. "No need for that, I'm only doing my part, sitting down and reading books. It's you guys who're doing the actual work."
"Still," Chef agreed with Squires. "Being able to keep our food cold will make a huge difference. Especially once winter comes," he looked up at the sky, "which I think won't be too far away, if this planet plays by Terra's rules."
Squires nodded. "No reason to believe it shouldn't. A freezer will probably keep us from starving during winter. But hey," he realized, "does this mean we'll be able to do the reverse too?"
Procene cocked her head questioningly.
"You know, heat places in winter?"
"Oh. Like that. Yeah, I don't see a reason why not, after all the longsleepers had heating elements too."
"That is ace, Procene." He put his hands in his sides and sighed in contentment. "Heated rooms in winter, ice cream in summer…"
"Well," Chef pointed out, "We won't have any of those if we stand around dawdling, right?"
Squires gave him a gun-finger. "Exactly right, Chef-man! Let's get on with it."
Before they could, though, they saw Larisa and Odile standing behind them, Larisa's eyes stormy and her arms crossed.
"What's uh, what's all the cheering and singing about?" Odile asked. Had Larisa asked the question, it probably would've been worded slightly differently.
"We uh," Chef answered, "we think we got a cooling system to work."
"We think?" Squires exclaimed. "We did. We got it to work. Seriously, man, feel the cold air coming from those elements."
"Oh, that's… great," he said. "Keep our food fresh and all."
"Geez," Squires said. "Don't be too enthusiastic."
He chuckled. "Sorry, I guess I'm just not the exuberant type."
"Well, you should be. This just might have saved us."
Before everyone could take too much notice of Larisa's thundercloud face, Cass too returned, hauling another bird. "Hey guys. We havin' a meeting?"
Squires and Chef once more explained their achievement.
"Ooh, that is good news. Great job, guys. And you too, Procene! Good thing we lopped off your hand instead of leaving you to die."
Procene chuckled mildly. "Glad to prove I was worth the harrowing experience."
Squires clapped Chef on the shoulder. "Come on, Chef-man, let's get this thing finished."
They worked until the late hours, Squires carrying on and then taking Larisa for a walk while Chef made dinner, accompanied by Odile who hung around for a chat after a day of toiling in the fields. He assured Chef that in a few days, they'd be able to harvest the first rice plant, assuming nothing like some sudden blight happened. But he'd chuckled when he'd said the odds of a sudden plague wiping out all the crops in one instant were ridiculously small. "I mean, unless some mean-ass God really has it in for us, but… that won't be the case, will it?"
Chef didn't think so either.
When he looked up from his cooking, he saw Procene rising from her research table and looking out at the horizon, her hand on the revolver at her hip. "Hey Odile, we should go check. Looks like trouble."
He noticed it too and said, "Yeah, let's go see."
"Trouble?" Chef asked Procene when they joined her. They saw what she was looking at now too, a group of people walking towards the settlement, at least seven of them. They looked to be armed with bows and spears, but Chef counted at least two guns. And Cass wasn't there, not that they'd stand much of a chance even with her there, if these people proved to be violent. His stomach became a painful ball.
"… I don't think so," Procene said, squinting against the setting sun. "They… don't seem hostile."
"How can you tell?"
"One of them's carrying what looks like a lever-action rifle. I don't know much about guns, but I definitely know the range of that thing is more than enough for them to attack now if they wanted to, instead of getting in range of my revolver. The fact that they're not already shooting looks… promising."
As she said it, one of the people, wearing what looked like a wooden tribal mask, raised his hand and called out what sounded like a friendly greeting, but in a language Chef didn't understand.
He and his friends responded to the raised hand with a greeting of their own.
The people came even closer, and the man in the mask began speaking, a series of breathy syllables, clipped and cadenced.
"I… we… don't understand," Procene said.
The masked man gestured towards one of his warriors to come forward. The girl, not looking a day over sixteen and dressed in a very skimpy cloth two-piece, stepped to the fore and unrolled a large blanket, displaying the contents inside. There were bundles of dried herb, primitive melee weapons, some sort of dried meat mixed with fruits and kneaded into a ball with fat, and what looked like herb cigars.
"Oh, you… want to trade?" Procene asked, making circular motions with her hand and stump to illustrate what she meant.
The masked man let out a short syllable and made a sharp nod.
"Any of you know what these things are?" Odile asked the others. "The dried herbs look medicinal, but…"
"Yes," Procene confirmed. "Wild healroot. We used it for, well." She held up her bandaged stump.
"The dried food is some sort of pemmican," Chef told the others. "Tastes pretty bland but keeps for ages."
"And I assume those uh, smokable things are, well," Procene cleared her throat, "meant for 'relaxation' purposes."
"Mm," Chef said. "We could use the pemmican, as much as they can spare and we can afford. What about the herbs?"
"Medicine is always important," Procene said. "But what do they want for it? We can't trade if we have nothing to give in return."
The girl in skimpy clothes tapped the masked man on the shoulder and pointed at the longsleeper wrecks lying a ways further.
"Hu!" the man exclaimed in realization, then uttered a few more syllables.
"We… don't understand, sorry," Procene said again.
The young girl held up her finger to attract their attention and said carefully, "Seel… bar," her cute face immediately turning red in embarrassment. Chef tried to keep his eyes off her considerable bust.
"Seel… bar?" Procene asked. "I'm sorry, I don't…"
She giggled and tried again. "Seel…bar. Meh… tell."
"Meh tell?" Then Procene's face kit up. "Oh! Meh-tell. Metal! Silver, you want silver?"
The girl stared intently and Procene's lips when she spoke and painstakingly said, "Seel… var." She bounced on her heels, making the big white flower in her jet-black hair dance, as well as… other parts of her, and pointed at the longsleepers again, saying a word in her language.
"Right," Procene said to the others. "They want silver in return, and they know that it's used in electronics… somehow. Stay here, I still have some from when I disassembled those components. Figured it was worthless except as a conductor, but if these people want it, well, better to trade it for something we need right now."
"But," Odile protested. "If you go… well, you've got the gun."
She smiled gently. "If they wanted to kill us, they'd have done so by now." She turned to the masked man, pointed at the shack and said, "Silver."
The mask went down and up in a curt nod.
As they waited, Chef noticed the young tribal girl giving him a coy look and a smile and he felt warmth rushing up his chest. A quick reprimand from her leader made her look at the ground instead of at Chef.
After a few moments of awkward silence, Procene came back with a mess tin of silver flakes.
The girl clapped in her hands and said enthusiastically, "Seel-var!"
Procene placed the silver flakes on the blanket and pointed at the medicinal herb. The flower-haired girl slid them forward and counted off a suitable number of silver flakes, more than half. Procene then pointed at the pemmican and the girl slid them towards them too, took the rest of the silver flakes, then pondered for a moment, sliding a quarter of the pemmican back towards the tribe's side.
"I… suppose that's fair?" Odile said.
"I think they know the rates of silver-to-tribal-stuff better than we do," Chef pointed out. "If they say that's what it's worth, then I guess that's what it's worth."
"I don't think they're giving us a bad deal or taking advantage," Procene said. "They'd be able to give us much less and they know it, so I think they're being fair." She looked at the man in the mask and bowed. It was the universal gesture of respect, so hopefully it was among this tribe too. The girl, however, covered her mouth with her hand and burst into laughter, the other guards of the tribe laughing along with her. Even the masked man let out a chortle, though his arms remained crossed.
Procene stood dumbfounded for a moment before the girl, still giggling, mimicked her gesture and then pointed her finger back and forth and back and forth between Procene and the tribe leader, before hooking her fingers into each other.
"Oh!" Procene realized. "It uh… seems I accidentally proposed to their leader?"
"You could do worse," Odile pointed out. "Can't see his face, but look at those pecs. Hmhm."
Those weren't exactly the pecs Chef was currently focusing on (and trying very hard not to), so he took Odile's word for it. "At least they're having a good laugh about it."
The girl got her guffawing under control enough to roll up her blanket, along with the silver flakes and the remainder of the goods, leaving the medicinal herb and the agreed-upon pemmican behind.
The chief grunted an order to his men and they turned, with the young girl giving Chef a final flutter of her eyelids before they left.
"If you want to give her a bow," Procene said with a mysterious smile, "I certainly won't blame you."
He stood looking at the departing group. "She… she's probably too young for me anyway."
"She looks old enough. And we're on the Rim," Odile pointed out. "The cops aren't going to arrest you or anything."
For a brief minute, Chef doubted whether or not he should. Or at least tell her to wait, but his hesitation was just long enough for her to pass beyond his reach. "Nah…" he said. "It's fine, there's no point."
"Sure," Odile said with a shrug and began gathering the stuff they'd bought. Procene looked at him with a face that showed either disappointment or compassion.
"… What?"
"Nothing," she said quietly. "Just… sometimes the difference between a lifetime of happiness and a lifetime of loneliness is a single moment of courage."
"Come on," he snorted. "She was a teenage tribal girl who was being flirty with the exotic travellers from another world. Hard to tell if she's a potential 'lifetime of happiness' at this point, is it?"
She half-shrugged. "Well, now you'll never know." She sounded positively sad, and he realized he felt that way too. But it was too late. She sighed and said, "Promise me, if they do ever come back, that you'll at least invite them to the campfire so you can… I don't know, talk to her or something."
"We'll see."
She smiled at him and said, "If you don't then I will," and walked back to her desk.
Chef stood looking for a while longer, the shapes of the traders now just small blotches in the dusk, then went to continue dinner, trying to tell himself he'd avoided making a fool of himself instead of missing a wonderful opportunity.